I have been away from posting for over a week - its just been too busy and my hand had hurt too much and stuff.  But here is where we are.

The sheetrock is on the walls in the living room and my dad came over this morning to start doing the taping.   These images were taken with the fisheye at 2.8 - LOOK AT HOW MUCH LIGHT THERE IS!   And that room is dark during the day in the summer.

Here is a shot from one back corner:

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and then from the other

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and then a view from the  kitchen looking in:

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if there wasn't so  much dust you could almost site on the couch and enjoy yourself...HA!

As for the kitchen floor well that is turning into a true labor of love.  My hand aches today from holding a hammer for two nights in a row and a downward 45 degree angle while using  a chisel to get the old tile up bit by bit.   Tuesday night Matt and I worked together and got a ton done, and last night I worked alone and got a fair bit done.  This is all we have left

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and another shot

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we need to finish it up tonight ( not sure how much help I will be) because I took the day off of work tomorrow so my sister and I can get the black stuff up.  I was going to wait and take Monday off to do it but I will feel better once its done!  I have a wedding to shoot on Saturday and I don't want to come back from that and have to worry about working on the floor - if we can finish it tomorrow then I won't have to worry about anything til July 4th when we play to free the floor from years of misuse - its own Independance day (CORNY!)

This is the transition from the kitchen to the living room:

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These floors are going to completely ROCK! 

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(*note - all of my cameras are in the shop being cleaned in prep for next weeks wedding so this post is without pictures)

the light at the end of the renovation tunnel has been hard to see - and there is really one reason why - the kitchen floor!  If it wasn't for that floor and having to pull up linoleum, tile and then black tar paper I would be doing a dance of joy!  I mean, all of the sheet rock is up!  Tying in the wiring takes just one day and the taping and sanding will be over before we know it and then paint!  What more could there be - oh yeah that floor.  I have shown you pictures of it and Matt my dad and I have been puzzling over what to do about that black tar paper b/c scraping it up in its current sticky format takes LOTS of elbow grease and time. Time is unfortunately what I don't have.  I have a day job, a business to run, a boyfriend, family and friends (that I have been ignoring), a garden (that thankfully Matt handles) and some upcoming client needs - I really didn't have any time to add in a several day project of scraping all of that tar paper off.

Wednesday night I did a small 3x2 foot spot under the refrigerator and I didn't even get it all clean and it took  me over 40 minutes to scrap!  Doing the entire floor will take HOURS!

That is where ERIN comes in (did I mention that I wanted to kiss her?) Yesterday during a casual chat in her office I was sharing with her some of the burdens of the renovation and she saved my life!  In telling her about the black tar paper and how I was going to have to find the time to do this she mentioned casually that she did that - and when she was 8 months pregnant with Child #3 no less!  She told me that the way she did it was with water.

WATER??? WATER!!! The most plentiful substance on earth!  That’s all it takes!  I couldn't believe it - how could a substance that I can get so readily out of my tap help me solve the enormous problem I have ahead of me of scraping all of that black stuff off of my floors?? WATER!!   She said she applied water and it came right up - come on now!

I even queried her further asking about chemicals she might have added to the water. She thought no because she was pregnant at the time she wouldn't have used chemicals.  Erin mentioned her memory isn't always right but she thought she was sure.  I told her I would try it and then come back to her today asking her to think harder about the chemical I was sure she put in there.

Well I went home, and I checked the internet and low and behold Erin was right!  Some of the internet people said to use hot water so I started with that - and wouldn't you know it worked!  I skipped around the kitchen at that point saying how much I loved Erin and her genius! 

More research showed that that stuff is totally yucky, possibly containing asbestos - so Erin's idea of water is even better because water contains the particles from getting into the air and then into your lungs.  And then once it is all scraped up you scrub the floor with a scotch brite pad and some water/vinegar mix and you are ready to sand!  I am going to be prepped and ready to go this weekend!

I now see light at the end of this renovation tunnel.  I am going to LOVE the hardwood floors even though when Matt first suggested it I tried to fight it off (no I want tile!) and Erin said I would like it too (I had it in my last house and I didn't like it I told her).  Sometimes I need to listen to other people because they not only have good ideas but they have all the answers!

Thanks Erin!

PS.  I didn't like the "hardwood" floors in my last house but they weren't real hardwood - they were a laminate floor - and they needed to be redone so they never looked good.  These are going to ROCK!

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I am starting this post without really having a title.  It could be because I am tapped out, done, on empty.  We are nearing the end of the renovation and while I know I said last night that it made me a little sad it also is making me a bit crazy.  Today on the way to lunch Matt said something about needing to take care of his own life and I snapped yelling in the street that I couldn't wait til this renovation was f'ing over with.   I snapped because he gets to take care of his own life and I have been working every day strait since May 3rd - for those counting at home that is 49 strait days without one entire day off and I need one.  If I am not working here at my day job then I am working on the renovation on weekends and at lunch every day I work on my photography business.  Today I took the day off from the photography thing at lunch to have lunch with my sweetie but I think I should have stuck to photography - I am just crabby!

This past weekend we hung sheetrock on the ceiling.  My dad had run out of gas so I lifted an 8lb drill up above my head to screw in the sheetrock about 250 times.  My arm was sore.  This time though we had this nifty tool to life the sheetrock to the ceiling and hold it in place while we put the screws in:

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The sheetrock got in and on Monday we put up some of the walls. 

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I guess when I say we I mean he :)

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Its starting to come together and I think when he takes some of his tools home I might be able to catch my breath.

But there is still the floor to contend with.  All of the black stuff needs to come up.  Matt and I worked on getting the linoleum up last night - and some of the tiles (thank you Matt!) but there is still 90% of it to do and I am tired. 

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ALMOST!  The insulation went up in the living room this week.  We started on Sunday - it was hot and humid and we did the ceiling first and I spent the day dripping with sweat while fiberglass fell all over me.  It wasn't that much fun but it did feel like we were getting somewhere and I kept reminding myself of how much warmer the house would be next winter and how much less it would cost me to heat.

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When I got home the other night alot of the wall insulation had been put up and that is when I felt a little sad.  We are really on the homestretch now.  Two years of thinking and planning and waiting and then 11 or so months of living in renovation or transition stages is a long time - and now that is almost all over!!!  What will I do when there is no more mess in my house constantly

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What will I do when I don't have to pour ever extra cent I have into the renovation and paying off the kitchen cabinets (but thats not for a few months yet:( )

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I will tell you what I am going to do - I am going to kick back and enjoy my house - just like the dog does everyday

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we are having a tag sale this weekend... and of course its going to rain - but we are ready with our tag sale stickers

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We are also running the electrical this weekend - and I am going to help!  i have been reading my Wiring 1-2-3 book which was a gift from Shaun and Wendy for my 30th birthday 5 years ago!  I hung onto it and now I am going to use it to help my dad.  I figure I should get a little more hands on now while I still have my dad here to teach me!

First step the book tells me is to draw out the plan - and they use colored pencils so I will use colored pencils - i bought these eraseable ones last night in case I change my mind :)

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as you know I am not quite convinced about the story I have been fed about my house.  Oh I think it was a gas station in the 30's but I am not sure it was on this location.  This building permit has been in the house for a while. 

Permit

Its old so I don't want to destroy it so it just gets moved from spot to spot until the proper way to take care of it came to me.  It came out of the garage and then was in my makeshift office before the renovation and until this morning it has been kicking around the kitchen collecting dust.  I got up early this morning and was cleaning the kitchen when I realized I should take a hard look at this.

Permit2

  If you look close you will see it says "moving building" as the reason for the permit.  Clearly this house has been moved, now I just have to figure out when and how.  This permit is dated 1940 but I thought this house wasn't a house until later??? Maybe it was moved so it could become a house??? The people who live behind me grew up in this house, I need to knock on her door.

I still don't know how to take care of this.  I am afraid if I put it in a ziploc bag then the lack of oxygen will cause it to disinegrate?  I was thinking of putting it into a frame, but where to hang it.  I could fill my not yet hung walls with memorabelia from this house and then were would I put a giant 48x60 picture of Matty and I!

Mattyand1

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LR_Renovation_05182008-23

or

"oh boy we are in real trouble"

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or

"this weekend I used a chainsaw"

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all good and appropriate titles for today’s blog post.  Over the course of this weekend a few other titles came to mind, but they are out of my head now, and I didn't get a chance to write them down because I was busy wielding the chain saw, or the camera - which ever one I could get my hands on.

This weekend we replaced the main beam in my house.  For those of you who feel like this was just another weekend reno project IT. WAS. NOT.  It’s akin to replacing your spinal cord.  You pretty much remove the largest structure in the house, the structure that is HOLDING UP your house and replace it with a new one - all the while your house is held up by "temporary walls".  Tension was running high Saturday morning and at least twice during the day I was so nervous that I thought the entire house might collapse.

We started off here on Saturday morning - with the temporary walls up, the old main bean still in place and my stairway still as it is (keep an eye on the stairway - that goes through some big changes)

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As you can see we were in a bad spot with the old construction - this is what was in place for the header by the door that was holding up the old main beam.

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The first order of business was to remove the old main beam.  Easiest way to cut down wood is with a chainsaw so that is what we did.  I took my turn and made two cuts with the chainsaw but then I had to get down and just watch.  I am not sure why but I think it had to do with the fact that 1. I was leaning on the chainsaw because I wasn't strong enough and 2. They had some plan they were working on that I didn't know.

We got the first half of it out and it was starting to look like we were in good shape for the day!  Heck at this point it was only 10AM or so.  After we had all the chainsaw cuts made we went about cutting the notches out of the existing floor joists, thereby restoring them to their original 2x6 structure and that makes them stronger!

We did that and then it was time to get the bean into place - again I thought we were going to be done by 2PM, I would be at Kim's in time for dinner, we were moving right along.

My dad had hurt his back, and the bean wasn't too heavy, so Brian and I carried it up into place.  We brought it into the house, tilted it so one side was on the new header and then we lifted it up into place.  On the end by the doorway the bean was touching the 2nd floor floorboards but on the end by the kitchen there was a 2 1/2" gap.  My dad was standing next to me and I turned to look at him while Brian was saying that and his face changed to a look of terror and then he uttered the words "We are in real trouble".  My father is in charge of these things and is pretty level headed and never undertakes a project without knowing he can do it.  So when he said those words I felt my stomach drop to the floor!

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The next hour or so involved some heavy conversations about jacks and lifts and how we were going to do this.  I made sandwiches for everyone because I thought we could all think better on a full stomach.  Turns out that my Dad original plan involved having the new beam level with the floor upstairs - but that wasn't possible.  The old beam was level with the floor upstairs but the old beam was also twisted - which is how it had gotten level with the floor upstairs.  The 2nd floor was also sagging in the middle and hand come down to rest on the old beam, which had made it all touching.  Taking the old beam down the 2nd floor sagged down a bit more.  Putting the new beam in place - which was perfectly level - just highlighted the floors sagging.

So after much thinking and planning and lunch Dad realized that the 2nd floor does not have to be touching the new beam on all points, that the floor joists, that would now be supported by joist hangers

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would carry the weight of the floor and distribute it down to the beam.

So we set about getting it into place - which honestly took the rest of the afternoon.   I got very nervous during the periods where we were jacking up part of the floor - you could  hear the entire house creak  - and then Kim needed someone to go watch the girls for a bit so I went b/c honestly Brian is more useful than I am and when I came back around 5PM it was all done!  Well, not all done - but some joist hangers were in.  The temporary walls were left in place and on Sunday we set about getting the rest of the joist hangers in.

I picked Dad up at 7AM on Sunday and by 7:30AM we were working.  He installed the rest of the joist hangers and I started taking down the doorframe that was around the stairway.  This work involved a chainsaw and a skill saw so I got my fill of power tools this weekend.

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When he reached a point where I could start taking the temporary walls down I started on that and within an hour or so I had all of those down and all that lumber hauled over to the chicken coop(which Matt is repairing and working on over the next couple of weeks)

Then I spent an hour or so getting things cleaned up while Dad finished taking down the doorway by the stairs.  This is what the living room looked like once I had it cleaned up!

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Pay special attention to the stairway - this is what it looked like before

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and this is what it looks like now

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Dad and I just stood and marveled at how much that one change opened that whole area up!  Now that doesn't seem like a small and scary stairway but a nice open area that takes you to the 2nd floor!

We are going to replace the oak treads on the stairs and put in a larger one at the bottom that swoops around the wall.  Its going to be glorious but it has made me go back and think about how I want that room laid out.

So this is where we are at for now, piddly work on electrical and construction this week and then next week we will finish electrical and get into the sheetrock - mercifully this will be over before I  know it :) 

The house is definitely re-settling and last night walking around upstairs you could hear it.  I get nervous  but then I just walk myself through how the house is supported and I feel fine.

Let me leave you with one more before and after

LivingRoomBefore (5)

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We got started on the renovation this weekend.  It was all hands on deck for the demo part, which I think everyone likes because it is really just destroying stuff.  I can't tell if the rainy weather was a benefit or not.  On the one hand it was not a benefit b/c the weather was cold and raw and since the heat was removed from the house it was cold and raw inside the house.  On the other hand you certainly didn't feel like you were missing anything having to work inside during the rainy weather.  And if you were working you didn't really feel that cold. 

So lets see where we are at

This was my living room:

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... this is now my living room:

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This was the view from the other side:

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This is the view from the other side of the room:

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You can see my shiny new kitchen in that picture!!! Ahhh at least that room is done!

Now, before we tore these walls down we thought that the wall that seperated the middle room from the living room was the old counter from when this house was a gas station

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But turns out that might not be so...when we removed that wall the hardwood floor that is in the middle room/living room ran directly underneath the wall. So the floor had to come before the wall and I  know the floor isn't original.  But how old is the floor - well we haven't been able to figure that out yet.  But we do know the heat was installed around 1993 and that was put in AFTER the mop board... but the floor might have come after that b/c the floor doesn't run under the mop board.  The mop board is looking original but the floor is not.  And if you take a look at the picture above and then look at the landscape of my house I am starting to doubt that this house was even in this location to begin with.  Questions are popping up in my head about this whole thing.  I know the house was lifted to put the basement it is not a stretch to think that it had been lifted AND MOVED!  My neighbors behind me have some ties to this house, I need to  pop over and talk to them as well as just go to city hall and see what I can find. And where did the gas tanks go that were in the front yard?  They would have had to have been dug up at some point but at what point?  I have much research to do.

Take a look here, that large beam running upwards in the middle is almost a dividing line of the house - and the framing changes on either side - one side has boards that are in line with the floor and others are open further down.

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In the meantime we continue to work on this, I won't like I am  nervous becasue it appears my dad might not be able to finish this and my electrical skills are limited.  I was accidentially electricuted on Sunday when my dad left some tools attached to a live wire, which isn't like him, which leads me to believe he might not be able to finish.  That being said I wonder how much knowledge I can cobble together between me, Brian and some books...

between now and then the planning continues:

RenovationFirstWeekend

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You have probably seen pictures of it if you read this blog.  Its tiny - now it might not be that tiny for someone just starting out or but for someone with several active (or used to be active) hobbies there isn't enough space.  I thought at first it was a matter of organization.  If I just had things cleaned up and in order then I could create a space to work on photos, make cards, scrapbook, etc.  But what I found it out of site out of mind takes over and I haven't touched a scrapbook in over a year!  I haven't made cards in months!  Of late I have thought that it was a matter of too much clutter.  So I am trying to get rid of alot of items that are not necessary and just take up space.  For example, I am trying to archive my sketches and sketch books from last year.  I usually don't reference them back as they are just a place for me to look.  I am also DESPERATLEY trying to figure out the best storage systems for my photos.  I purchased a couple of years back and large flat file like this one.  THe ones that archietects use to store large blueprints and flat files.  Well that is GREAT but in this house I have to store it in the basement b/c the 

Filing Cabinet

Add to this the fact that I had hoped within a year I could undertake the renovation project I had planned on when I bought this house (new walls on the downstairs, new rooms on the upstairs) but things have not gone well at my job as of late (early and late) and I had to replace my furnace, my washing machine and tires on my car in the past 30 days.  Things are not good in the house renovation area.

Which brings me back to my original dilemma of hobbies and space and feeling like there isn't enough time.  Is that the problem?  Did it just come out in a stream of consiousness?? Is time my problem!  Well certainly I feel that is part of it, I don't have alot of time.  I have a job that keeps me away from home 12 hours a day and weekends are a race to get it all in.  And I think time will continue to be a problem until I am working from home and doing what I love.  Until them I could maximize what little time I have left 1. having a better systems for keeping all my stuff or 2. not caring and just taking it as it comes.  I like option 2 - just doing what you see in front of you except I miss my scrapbooks and I think some of the photograhs I have taken have gotten ruined b/c I don't have a place to keep them.

I have a weird little room upstairs that has no heat and is the dumpiest room in the house.  It has basically been a dumping ground because I refuse to use that room as storage of any kind because then I would have to admit that I am not getting a renovation any time soon.  You see if I keep saying:  I can't put anythign/spend any money in that room because I am going to renovatione it then hope lives on!  But as soon as I buy some shelves for that room and use it to help me organize all of my life I have admitted defeat.  Maybe I shouldn't see it as defeat, maybe I should see it as maximizing my life today UNTIL I have my renovation!

Here is my house:

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it snowed at my house yesterday for the first time.  I took this picutre of my carriage house.   I like it but it might come out better at sunset than sunrise.

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